Michiko Kakutani Books
Michiko Kakutani is an American literary critic and author, best known for her long tenure as chief book critic for The New York Times, where she won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1998. Her writing is noted for its clarity, insight, and cultural relevance.
Known for: The Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump
Books by Michiko Kakutani
The Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump
In this incisive work, Pulitzer Prize–winning critic Michiko Kakutani examines the erosion of truth in contemporary American society. She explores how political propaganda, social media, and cultural relativism have undermined objective reality, leading to a crisis of trust and reason. Through historical and literary analysis, Kakutani warns of the dangers posed by misinformation and the abandonment of rational discourse.
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Historical background: Postmodernism, Cultural Relativism, and the Seeds of Skepticism
Long before the age of Trump, the philosophical soil had been loosened for a crisis of truth. In the latter half of the twentieth century, academic movements like postmodernism and cultural relativism questioned whether objective reality even existed. Scholars and theorists argued that all knowledge...
From The Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump
The Rise of Subjectivity and the Collapsing Boundary Between Fact and Opinion
As cultural relativism spread, subjectivity became celebrated—the self’s perceptions and feelings elevated as the ultimate authority. In literature and art, this produced rich introspection. In politics, it encouraged confusion between emotion and evidence. When I describe the rise of subjectivity i...
From The Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump
About Michiko Kakutani
Michiko Kakutani is an American literary critic and author, best known for her long tenure as chief book critic for The New York Times, where she won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1998. Her writing is noted for its clarity, insight, and cultural relevance.
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Michiko Kakutani is an American literary critic and author, best known for her long tenure as chief book critic for The New York Times, where she won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1998. Her writing is noted for its clarity, insight, and cultural relevance.
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